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FRENCH REVOLUTION 1789-1799
• What do you already know about the French Revolution?
Social Causes • Outdated “Estate System”
• 1st and 2nd estates owned most of the land, controlled most of the wealth, and were tax exempt
• 3rd estate paid heavy taxes, have few privileges, and have no voice in government
Social Causes
Economic Causes • Bad harvests in 1787 and 1788 à rising food prices and
unemployment à “Bread Riots” • France is borrowing tons of money and is in massive debt
and their broken tax system isn’t helping… • While peasants are starving, the privileged classes are
living the high life – the monarchy spends large amounts of money on luxury goods and war (ex. American Revolution. Thanks, France. We’ll get you back in WW1.)
• Queen Marie Antoinette was especially known for her lavish spending.
Marie Antoinette & The Palace of Versailles
“What is the Third Estate?” by Abbe Sieyes, January 1789 • The plan of this book is fairly simple. We must ask
ourselves three questions. • What is the Third Estate? Everything. • What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. • What does it want to be? Something…
• Where do you think this is heading?
• How much liberty is enough or too much, and who decides?
Beginning of the Revolution • Storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789
• Violence ripples throughout France
Beginning of the Revolution • Women’s March on Versailles, October 1789
Move to Radicalism • By 1792 conditions in France have not improved. France
is still broke, food is still expensive, most people still don’t have a voice in government.
• Radicals, the sans-culottes, seize power from the government and the revolution takes a radical turn…
The Reign of Terror • To combat the threat of foreign invasion and domestic uprising, the Committee of Public Safety is created. Motto: “We suck at protecting public safety.”
• Led by Maximilien Robespierre, they basically run France from 1793-1794.
• ”Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.”
The Reign of Terror • More than 40,000 people were killed (16,000 by
guillotine), including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. • Mobs beat other victims to death, while others were shot
into open graves. • Sometimes people died for their political opinions or
actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them.
Stories of Terror • Mass shootings Lyon • Terror at Nantes • The Carmelite Nuns of Compiegne
Stories of Terror • A description of The Terror at Bordeaux.
• “A Woman was charged with the crime of having wept at her husband’s execution…she was condemned to sit for hours under the blade which shed upon her, drop by drop the blood of her dead husband…before she was released by death…”
• Jean-Baptiste Henry • A journeyman tailor, aged 18, was convicted of sawing down a tree
of liberty. Executed September 6, 1793
!
End of Terror • Robespierre executed on 7 Thermador II (July 28, 1794).
End of Revolution • More moderate leaders came to power, but they were
corrupt and relied on the military to keep peace. • In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the government
and eventually named himself Emperor for life and conquered nearly the entire continent of Europe before being exiled to an island in the middle of the Atlantic.
• French revolutionary ideas spread throughout Europe although power and social status basically went back to the way things were before… for just a while longer.
French Revolution in a Nutshell • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vNgoX8gE70
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